1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an information retrieval system and more specifically to a system and method for building links between Frequently Asked Questions ("FAQs") and answers to FAQs.
2. Background Art
Frequently asked questions are commonly presented by outside parties to organizations. For example, FAQs are presented to field service technicians who repair products sold or leased by an organization. FAQs are also presented to telephone "hot lines" personnel who deal with customer problems, complaints or questions. Teaching assistants who teach or assist students in large classes, and primary care physicians who treat patients in medical clinics also encounter FAQs. See, Ackerman, Mark S. and Malone, Thomas W., Answer Garden: A Tool for Growing Organizational Memory, Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Office Information Systems, pp. 31-39, Cambridge, Mass. (April 1990), which is fully incorporated herein by reference. FAQs may also originate from within an organization, for example, as co-workers ask each other for assistance when computer problems occur.
FAQs have become common on the Internet in recent years. "FAQ postings" are found on Internet bulletin boards, and are usually authored as continuous texts, with the questions followed by answers in sequential order. The user's method of navigation to answer questions is by browsing through the questions-answers text or by using a "Find" command within the application program to locate specific text strings. However, FAQ postings are unable to link to and access a separate information collection. Additionally, the questions-answers texts which are entered in FAQ postings cannot be deleted. Thus, users of FAQ postings face the inconvenience of having to read large amounts of text to find answers to their questions.
More sophisticated FAQ postings and systems have recently appeared on the World Wide Web (WWW). FIG. 1 shows a screen shot 10 of a FAQ system using hypertext markup language (HTML)-based hypertext links for linking FAQs to answers. Hypertext systems permit text or a location in a document to be linked to other texts or locations within the same document, to other documents as a whole, and/or to text in other documents. In screen shot 10, the HTML-based hypertext links allow users to click on any question in questions list 15 to reach, via an HTML link, one or more of selected texts 20 which answer the selected question. Examples of hypertext systems include LinksWare by LinksWare Corporation, Acrobat by Adobe Systems, Augment by Douglas C. Engelbart, and the Web-based HTML. The following references are fully incorporated herein by reference: Gruman, Galen, Reviews: Adobe Acrobat 2.0, MacWorld, pp. #59-61, (March 1995); Marie, Michael, Reviews: Easy-to-use LinksWare connects the documents, MacWeek (Aug. 9, 1993); Cohen, Raines, News: LinksWare 3.0 gets more hooks, MacWeek (May 10, 1993); Engelbart, Douglas C., Toward High-Performance Organizations: A Strategic Role For Groupware, submitted for publication in Proceedings of the GroupWare '92 Conference, San Jose, Calif., Aug. 3-5, 1992. HTML linking is further discussed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,572,643, issued on Nov. 5, 1996, which is also incorporated herein by reference.
FIGS. 2A-2D show various screen shots of "WWW FAQ Question and Answer" web pages located on the Netscape.TM. web server. This FAQ system allows users to contribute answers to their own or other users' questions. Under this FAQ system, a user may enter new questions or consult a list of questions currently stored in the system. Once a new question is entered, the entered question joins the current list of questions stored in the system. Any user consulting the list of stored questions can pose a question to the system, view the answers, and/or add his/her own answer to at least one of the questions in the questions list.
FIG. 2A is a screen shot 50 indicating how to navigate the WWW FAQ Question and Answer Index. FIG. 2B is a screen shot 55 whereby a user can enter a question in query field 60 and select the "Ask Question" button 65. FIG. 2C is a screen shot 70 whereby a user can type a question in the query field 60 and select the "Add Question" button 75 to add the question to the FAQ system. FIG. 2D is a screen shot 80 whereby all questions stored in the FAQ system are shown in the questions list 85. One disadvantage of this system is that the questions-answers texts which are added in this system cannot be deleted.
The "Answer Garden" system, which was developed by Mark Ackerman at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, consists of a database of questions and answers arranged in a tree hierarchy. Users can browse through increasing levels of detail in the tree structure, until they either find exactly or almost the question for which they are seeking an answer, or conclude that their question has not been submitted to and answered by the system. If the user's question matches a question already in the system, then the answer will be retrieved from the system's database and displayed for the user. If the user's question does not match a question already in the system, then the user may submit his/her question to the system. Once the user's question has been submitted, it is routed to an expert who is responsible for questions in a particular region of the tree hierarchy. The expert may then choose to add the question and the expert's corresponding answer to the system. See, Ackerman, Mark S. and Malone, Thomas W., Answer Garden: A Tool for Growing Organizational Memory, supra. Similar to FAQ postings, the Answer Garden does not call upon or link to a separate information collection. Additionally, the Answer Garden does not provide ease of use for users of the system.
Under the FAQ FINDER system, a user can enter a question in natural language form, and the system uses FAQ files as a resource in attempting to answer the question. The FAQ files are organized as question/answer pairs. See, Hammond, K., Burke, R., Martin, C. and Lytinen, S., FAQ Finder: A Case-Based Approach to Knowledge Navigation, Proceedings of the 11th Conference on Artificial Intelligence for Applications, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, Calif. (1995), which is fully incorporated herein by reference.
What is needed is an information retrieval system which permits users to easily retrieve answers to FAQs and to update FAQs and answers in the system. cl SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention provides a system for retrieving information which is relevant to a user's input, and further for capturing the operator's knowledge into a database, thus making it easier to access that knowledge for others having a similar query. Thus, the invention provides an organic approach to building a "learning system." The system provided by the invention has an input interface through which a user can enter an input. A questions source is coupled to the input interface and contains questions which are comparable to the input and which the source retrieves in response to an input. An information source is coupled to the input interface and contains information which is relevant to retrieved questions. A searcher is coupled to the input interface for searching the information source for information which is relevant to the input.
The present invention further provides a method for a computer system to retrieve information relevant to a user's input including the steps of: entering an input in an input interface; matching the input with a question stored in a questions source; and selecting a question in the questions source with which to retrieve information relevant to the question.
This invention is useful in situations where questions re-occur. For example, in a helpline or hotline environment, the users of this invention are the mediators between the information seekers (callers) and the information being sought. Callers often present the users with the same or similar questions, and this invention permits the users to store and access these similar questions with linked answers for the benefit of both the callers and the users.
This invention is also useful in situations, such as in a computer user group environment, where information seekers seek answers to similar questions. The invention permits the information seekers to access question-answer pairs which have been asked and stored by previous information seekers. The invention also permits information seekers to store their question-answer pairs for the benefit of future information seekers. Consequently, since the invention encourages and facilitates user input, organizations will now be able to better tailor the development of their products, or to improve their services, based on user or consumer input.
This invention is particularly useful in building "organizational memory systems" which can link recurring questions to formal and informal collections of information. See Engelbart, Douglas C. and Hooper, Kristina, The Augmentation System Framework, Interactive Multimedia, (edited by Sueann Ambron and Kristina Hooper), Microsoft Press, pp. #16-31 (1988), which is fully incorporated herein by reference. Formal information collections can include published document collections, monthly reports and documents contained in a computer server. Informal information collections can include e-mail messages, voice mail messages and journal or lab notebook entries.
This invention has the advantage of providing ease of use for users. Another advantage of the invention is that it can link FAQs to answers located in various environments, such as a local computer hard drive or a website on the Internet. Additionally, the invention permits users to expand the content of an information source.
The invention has the further advantage of permitting users to delete linked question-answer pairs which have become useless. For example, a catalog company using this invention may have stored question-answer pairs concerning Christmas discounts or sales during the months of November and December. Such "seasonal" question-answer pairs lose their importance later on. This invention permits such seasonal question-answer pairs to be removed when appropriate.